


Trees

by skszp



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Description Heavy, M/M, Nature, really just a game of spot-the-innuendos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-27
Updated: 2016-11-27
Packaged: 2018-09-02 11:23:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8665672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skszp/pseuds/skszp
Summary: Phil comes clad in brighter red than Dan has ever seen, brighter than sunset, than cat tongues, than the blood of a baby deer that has got lost, been lost to the natural ways of dark forests.

 
 A strange one-shot about a forest.





	

 

He is the forest. He breathes with the trees, exhales darkness where they stand so close that the sun doesn't reach through the crowns. The ground is always moist there, moss snakes around every rock making for a sweet, soft covering to rest upon. In the forest, nothing out of the ordinary ever happens. Everything has its course in an eco-system built for all to live in perfect symbiosis. Here, there are no pathways. Here, no humans have come for thousands of years.

Sometimes, only ever in the protection of the cloak of night Dan reaches above the trees to gaze at the world beyond his forest. In the horizon he imagines seeing an everlasting light. It stings in his eyes and won’t ever go out. It is not the moon. Moonlight soothes him and is soft enough to discover the cracks in his shields and find its way down to the foundation of the forest. No, this is the lights of a bigger word, a far more confusing word Dan only remember hearing a handful of times. "City" rings like an unwanted bell in his mind. Everything goes silent when he breathes it like a spell, “city”.

Phil comes clad in brighter red than Dan has ever seen, brighter than sunset, than cat tongues, than the blood of a baby deer that has got lost, been lost to the natural ways of dark forests.

He hears his name before he knows that it is a name. He is walking on tree tops and overhears an echo of "Phil" from miles and miles away. It evaporates from the ground and purposefully upwards towards the sky. Someone is screaming for Phil and unless Phil is among the clouds Phil will not hear them. Dan paces his forest slowly. He is not concerned for he has forgotten such a feeling existed and yet he is concerned for that very same reason.

He is the forest but he is also hollow. His back is carved out like the nests of earth wasps. Everything dwells in the forest but nothing dwells in him. He has dirt underneath his fingernails and keeps his back presses against tree trunks.

Phil is not difficult to find. Dan sinks down, brushing his trees, slowly letting his hands run along them. He finds him in small birds; they haven’t yet learnt fear and sigh in his ear, small voices, high and new. “We saw it and we think that it doesn’t know that there are things living in the ground. We saw it and we think that it has lost its mother. We saw it and its mother hasn’t taught it that there are things living where it is stepping.” He closes his eyes, hums over their small bodies and they calm down. He thanks them and then, from high branches, he sees him. Tumbling though the darkness below, feet moving just quick enough to tell anyone listening that this isn’t quite ordinary. Dan stares, taking care not to make a sound. Small birds might not yet be aware but he is. The feet blundering through dark wet ground filled with life are human. Helpless and dangerous, belonging to a human.

His lip is bleeding and all Dan wants to do is reach out a thousand hands and wipe away the splotches of red colouring Phil’s chin. But as is custom for everything here, as if he too belongs to the forest, as if he feels this demand, Phil touches his lip on his own accord and lowers his fingers to look at them with a strange expression. Fascination, fear, nothingness. "Phil" Dan manages the forest to breath, brush at Phil’s cheek and Phil tears his attention from his hand to where the breeze has come from.

There are glowing eyes but of a kind that Dan cannot ever remember seeing before. They seem to be grasping for light, whatever little they can find in the darkness surrounding them. It is shining light blues, greens, yellows; like owls and fireflies but not at all like those. This, Dan thinks, is a daylight kind of yellow, a to this place largely unfamiliar kind of yellow.

Dan wills him forward, slipping him through rough passages with a degree of ease only possible with guidance. Without knowing why, Dan orders branches to move and puddles to diminish from Phil’s path until he finds what he has been subconsciously guiding him towards. Dan’s soft bed of moss, clusters of forget-me-nots. The man’s strength slips away as soon as Dan looks up and around for a second. Remembers his other duties as if suddenly he is no longer the one controlling the forest but it has become the thing controlling him. Where are humans, where is fire, where is ill will, where are predators, where is shelter?

He halts and looks back down at Phil who has collapsed in a tired ball on the bed. Dan hears himself in a sigh of the wind and Phil shivers. He is already exhausted, almost sleeping. Dan dives down close and lets his feet grace the ground just barely. Mull and pine needles tickle his feet but he doesn't bother flattering it by laughing. Phil is slipping in and out of consciousness and he is shaking from the cold, gripping at his red coat.

Dan holds out a hand, not even for a second, but it is enough to summon warmth, blood, breath. He is still sensible enough so as not to dabble with fire. He locks the warmth he can muster around Phil and he stops shaking, breathe easing. Dan drifts back behind him. He secures this section of the forest in his mind, makes sure no one will want to go here tonight. No one usually dares, Dan inhabits the heart of the forest, where it is darkest, where the nights usually never ends but just slide in and out of each other. But tonight is not usual. He shows his teeth to a wolf when it whips its tail along his just made up border. It is not pleased, eyes twinkling, and Dan feels guilty. He guards the forest, he is to keep it his, theirs, but by one second, by a touch of a hand, it has been lent out.

Phil sleeps on his bed of moss, red cape splayed out around him. It is the middle of summer but this forest is always cold. Phil’s pale skin is still prickling, not from the chill but from the human instinct of knowing that without aid, he is prey.

He wakes up to darkness and the entire forest holding its breath.

 

 


End file.
